Supreme Court ruling on contractor background checks includes internal debate on privacy rights

The United States Supreme Court ruled yesterday that background checks conducted on government contractors — which included questions on prior drug use and treatment — by government agencies (in this case, NASA) are reasonable and did…

Using cellphone GPS tracking, family helps police catch man who robbed them

An article in today’s Washington Post tells the story of a Maryland couple who, after their home was burglarized, activated a GPS tracking service available from Sprint Nextel (their wireless carrier) and gave assistance to local…

Lots of health data breaches reported to HHS, only trivial ones to FTC

With just over a year having passed since the health data breach notification rules mandated by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act went into effect, and interesting contrast has emerged between…

Conflicting rulings leave open debate on privacy protections for social network data

In June, we noted with interest a California federal district court ruling in Crispin v. Christian Audigier that provided an interpretation of the status of social networking sites under the Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. §121)…

Supreme Court to hear corporate challenge to FOIA based on “personal” privacy

The United States Supreme Court today granted a petition of certiorari filed by the federal government, seeking to overturn a ruling by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed AT&T to prevent the disclosure of…

Questions to consider about GPS data, location tracking, and privacy expectations

The previous post looked at some of the variable and as yet unresolved factors that may help determine how and under what circumstances GPS location data may be used for investigations by law enforcement personnel, with…

Can GPS be used to track your movements, without a warrant? That depends…

The 4th Amendment implications of location-based data have been a topic of active discussion, prompted in part by two recent federal Circuit Court rulings, and to a lesser degree by some outspoken opinions made both in…